In past articles we tackled analysis of gamification as a tool for arts organizations as well as some methodology about how to design a game or game elements. This post will relate to how gamification can be used as a tool for marketing efforts. Gamification can be message, channel, and even marketing education. A game can be a marketing channel of its own for your organization or it can reside within a number of other channels.
Gamification in the Arts, Part 3: Game Design
Game design is, unfortunately, something that not many people are skilled at. The chances of being able to find and hire an experienced game designer in your area is slim. This leaves two options: consultants, or the process of educated trial and error. The iterative process: create a game, try it out, go back to the drawing board and improve it, try again. Almost anyone can ultimately find success in designing a game layer for use with a marketing, development, or educational effort
Gamification in the Arts, Part 2: What games fit what demographics?
"Video games sit at the confluence of history, technology, and art in such a way that's found in no other medium a place where influences from every creative field meet, mix, and recombine." -Daniel D. Snyder, The Atlantic. When most people conjure the image of a gamer they generally think of the past: a nerdy 18-25 year old male, probably white. The face of gaming has changed significantly over the last twelve years and now both men and women, young and old, and people of all races are engaged in games on a regular basis. Simply put, almost every conceivable group of people is now engaged in gaming, just not all groups are engaged in all types of gaming.
According to a report put out in 2012 by the Entertainment Software Association, the average American households have at least one dedicated gaming consul, PC, or smartphone and 49% of US households have an average of two. Roughly a third of game players in the US are over the age of 36, one third are between the ages of 19 and 35, and the remaining third are 18 and under (meaning that two thirds of gamers in the US are adults and that the average age of a game player in the US is 30!) Also, gender wise game players are now split evenly with 47% of all electronic gamers being women.
"What we are seeing in games is art at a world class stage design that is almost unmatched anywhere else. It has been very exciting to me to see so many ideas that integrate social good and efforts to make the world a better place through games." -Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States
The way in which people are engaging with games is changing. Console gaming (Microsoft X-Box, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo Wii) has been on the decline over the last couple of years while social media gaming and mobile device gaming has been on the increase. Similarly board gaming has also been on the rise (according to the 2011 US Census section on Arts, Recreation, and Travel) for the last twelve years with the explosion of number and quality of titles and has drawn increasing numbers of 'board game geeks' who wish to connect with people in person in the face of an increasingly electronic world.
So who plays games? What games do they play? Electronic gaming wise, women tend to skew towards games like The Sims (which is the "World's Biggest-Selling Simulation Series", and "Best Selling PC Game of All Time"), dance and fitness games, and social media gaming. Men tend towards first person shooters, strategy games, and sports games. Both men and women tend to engage in role playing games in roughly equal numbers. In the board gaming world less information is out there about consumption and engagement but it can be assumed, somewhat safely, that similar propensities exist throughout different platforms.
How can the arts harness this? As arts groups such as The Tate, The Royal Opera, Jacob's Pillow, and other groups explore game like content and applications they can use this data to fine target the apps they create towards market segments. As an industry, any arts group can use a game dynamic in order to drive deeper engagement in marketing or development. Activities such as the Glass Hunt on the Oregon Coast have proven successful at driving interest in art through a game layer, in this case, a scavenger hunt. Other groups such as 2am theatre have used applications such as scavengr to drive similar efforts in a combined physical and electronic fashion. In the arts, a typical marketing campaign has a one way thrust: "buy tickets, come see our show". With games, can be enticed to have longer involvement time-frames and be induced to repeat engagement.
Has your organization explored the possibility of using a game dynamic? Was it through social media, an app, or through an old school scavenger hunt? What did you find successful? What were your challenges? This series will continue in two more weeks with an exploration of how to approach game design, test games, and implement them. If you have questions regarding this topic or any others please ask them in the comments section!
Gamification in the Arts, Part 1: Assessing your organization and patrons
In the next two months a multi-part series will be published on this blog outlining how to assess, develop, implement, refine, and measure gamification as a potential tool for your arts organization. This first round of tools will allow you to better discern whether your organization is ready for the project, and if patrons would engage with a game project.
The Pew Research Center's Report on Arts and Technology
The Pew Research Center recently did a survey and report about how various arts organizations use technology including the internet, social media, and mobile technology. The report confirms that the arts are adapting to the overwhelming saturation of technology, particularly the internet and social media, and are venturing into deeper levels of engagement such as blogs, podcasts, and educational content.
Planning for When Things Fail
A recent article in Wired magazine by Robert Clapps focused on failure of things: helicopter parts to car tires. It is a good read and carries with it lessons. One of which is very important to the arts: failure can be costly and dangerous.
Every physical thing in an arts organization from the stage lights to the copier machine to the building itself will eventually fail or need maintenance. As technology is frequently outdated, technological failures can happen through breakage but also through communication incompatibilities, discontinuation of support from the manufacturer or author, and through failure of a connected system that enables the technology. There are several different aspects to failure and avoiding additional loss when it happens, indeed many large corporations have entire departments dedicated to failure and maintenance analysis, risk assessment, loss mitigation, and analysis of these issues.
Whether you are looking at a minor failure causing inconvenience or a major failure that endangers lives it is incumbent upon arts managers to minimize risk proportionate to the danger to people, operations, and physical collateral. Most of the arts sector has a replace it as we go mentality with a budget for facilities and equipment maintenance and replacement. Some organizations also rely on insurance to mitigate against catastrophic equipment failures. There are sometimes even departmental or organizational plans and schedules.
If not present already, incorporation of a regular organization-wide facility, technology, and equipment assessment should be a high priority for organizations of any size. These assessments can then be used to accurately determine how much risk and what type of risk is present and how likely failure will be to happen. Risk assessment should be given a monetary value that reflects the type and severity of the nature of the potential failure and assigned proportionate weight in budgets. For instance, a technological failure resulting in a breach of network security can lead to personal information of patrons being compromised and not only effect the finances of your organization but also those of your patrons.
It is not enough to rely on a vendor to determine risk in many situations. Software companies of all sizes test for security but it is notable how often failures occur. Vendors are frequently the authors of software, the testers for the products, as well as the salespeople and support staff. As such it can be difficult to get an unvarnished assessment of the true strength of software from vendor.
To combat this you need to do your research. When reviewing any new or existing piece of technology, hardware or software it is wise to take a multi-format approach. Read reviews and talk to colleagues in both your field who are using the product but also those in the software field. Often times there are chat boards that can also offer illuminating insight as to the strength of software based on or interfacing with another piece of software (such as Apache for databases). Any system is only as strong as its weakest component and, at an application level, you will be looking at not only the strength of the application but also the operating system that it was written for, their age, and their compatibility with other applications (including operating system based security, application based security, and network security.)
Finding a balance between planning for the future and available money can be a challenge but on the other hand planning for the future can also save your organization money, heartache, and increase efficiency over time. Nonprofit Technology Network and Idealware both have resources and education for technology planning and can help get you started. If you have additional resources that you would like for your colleagues to be aware of, please post them in the comments!
For Those of You Who Can't Stand It Anymore: A Homemade Cell Phone Jammer
The invention of the cell phone and more specifically the advent of text messaging and smart phone technology have been disruptive to the traditional theatre environment. For some, even now, the thought of being distracted by the light they give off, the sound of tapping keys, and the sound a phone on vibrate is enough to cause an altercation.
Please note that actually building a cell phone jammer is against the law in the US and many other countries. Having said that, Wired recently published instructions for how to create a device that broadcasts disruptive signals on the same frequency that cell phones use to communicate with towers. These devices would be enough to disrupt a cell phone signal in a mid sized theater, thereby making the cell phone functionally inoperative.
The idea around cell phone jammers isn't new, but it does call to question whether or not the performing arts community has outgrown this idea of creating a quiet, even sacred, space for performance. Innumerable performing arts institutions now give permission, even blessings, to smart phone users in some performances or in certain parts of the house. Even more, however, still ask patrons to turn off all electronic devices before a show begins.
So, is it time for a cell phone jammer or is it time to bring smart phone seats to your house?
Adapting to Changes in Technologies
As new technologies and software are released and older versions become antiquated or obsolete, it puts pressure on arts organizations to keep up. Adapting to these changes and pressures isn't only a matter of finding the budget to buy the most recent upgrade of a productivity suite, sometimes it is about fostering the change through your organization and making sure that the new technology is successful. It also involves thinking strategically and tactically. The culture in any organization is a living thing. To keep it healthy you have to be cognizant of what is happening: is communication good/open? Are new ideas welcomed? Are concerns being addressed appropriately? How is morale? Understanding the health of your organization and working towards making it healthier can be intrinsic to having an efficient and productive organization.
Before approaching any technological implementation, first step back and ask the question: "What does success look like?" Define the improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and outputted product at the outset and then set these expectations against real data. If you know of another organization that adopted this technology, ask them what their expectations, roadblocks, and successes were. Do research, look for reviews of the product and testimonials on both the positive and negative side and use these to help you form your expectations as well.
If you want the people who will be using the software to become adept at it, then it would be wise to ask them how they feel about the change, what questions they have, and if they have any concerns that can be addressed. Talking with people is your second step after defining your picture of success. Find out who is enthusiastic about the new tech and who is resistant. Put the enthusiastic person to work as your champion and keep tabs on the resistor. Your job is to convince the people who are neither enthusiastic nor resistant that adoption of the new tech is a good idea.
Addressing needs as they arise becomes important as the new technology is being implemented. Frequently software does many of the tasks at your organization better and a couple of them worse. Being aware of these eventualities and having handy work arounds or other ways to mitigate the pain will be essential for evangelizing individuals and departments that have minor doubts. Further being able to show the benefits in other areas may help towards this end as well.
Change management is a good idea for large changes in an organization (migrating to a Customer Relationship Management System from several disparate systems is an example). There have been extensive writings about organizational change. A good one is from John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, who put forward the eight-step idea around change management in his book "Leading Change." Here are his eight steps below:
1) Create Urgency
2) Form a Powerful Coalition
3) Create a vision for change
4) Communicate the vision
5) Remove Obstacles
6) Create Short-term Wins
7) Build on the change
8) Anchor the changes in Culture
SEO Your Location on Mapping Programs
Locations on maps are subject to the similar search engine optimization algorithms that websites are. Google, and other mapping programs take relevance, type of business, prevalence, tags and other metadata and other factors or order the representation of physical business on any map you call up. Simply claiming your address on Google, Yahoo, Mapquest and other portals is the first step. The algorithm that arranges addresses on any given maps search page takes into consideration over 100 different factors when delivering the results in the order they do. Some you don't have control over and some you do. Here are some suggestions for improving your address in search ranking on maps.
- Citations: Linking the URL for the s page directly from other pages, preferably pages that Google and other search engines trust. The more trustworthy sources that list the business address the more the impact will be. Direct URL links to the map of the business should be available on all sites you control: your website, wikipedia page, and social media.
- Reviews: For instance a review of the business location on google will help with optimizing your google results, rinse and repeat for Yelp, etc. (example: if you plug "Georgetown Liquor Co, Seattle" into google maps, the business has 29 reviews). Reviews need to be linked directly to the address you want to be found. Caution: faking reviews can backfire. Most reviews a mixture of positive and negative, fake reviews are pretty obvious.
- User content: Check in on Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Of course you need to claim the address listing for the map that the application uses.
In addition to these three things, standard usage of SEO best practices are applicable to mapping. Use names such as 'Map to XYZ Theater Company' rather than 'click here for a map' as your link. To quote a friend, Mark Gerth of the Washington State Arts Alliance (who first turned me on to SEO), 'click here' doesn't need help being found, you do.
If you have additional helpful suggestions for Geo SEO please leave them in the comments!
Gaming or gamification: a tool for the arts
According to surveys done by Comscore, gaming online, on smart phones, and among women has been growing for years. Likewise the number and quality of board games has exploded in the last twelve or so years. The upshot of these phenomena is a clear indication that gaming and gaming culture is on the rise globally and all indications are that slow and steady growth will continue to happen in this sector.
But how do the arts harness this phenomena? Game dynamics can be used to attract attention, deepen interaction, and retain interest. Games of course have always held interest in technology and examination of game mechanics regularly shows up on Tech literature. Beyond the tech world gamification has also become a subject of interest in the corporate world in general. Gaming and gamification holds promise for the arts. Applications include game dynamics on websites to bringing game mechanics to your marketing or development efforts.
Roughly speaking game mechanics fall into a number of broader categories and smaller subcategories of stimuli and response mechanisms:
- Achievement: points, levels, rewards, recognition, and gifts.
- Competition: leader boards, envy, varying challenge from human interaction, and the human competitive instinct.
- Cooperation: altruism, social fabric, communal discover, commerce, and teamwork.
- Ownership: building something that is yours, loyalty, self-expression, and loss avoidance.
Before embarking on gaming or gamification it is wise to consider your brand, your audience, and your goals. In order to motivate specific behaviors the right combination of mechanics and dynamics need to be in place and these can vary from audience to audience. Indeed, high powered consultants at high powered firms can be hired to help with gamification but this isn't always necessary. A simple, well planned addition of gamification can increase time spent on a website by two or three fold. For instance, if a customer answers three questions correctly about your organization's history they get a 5% discount on their current purchase. Will everyone participate? Probably not, but it will deepen the experience for a number of people and potentially deepen their understanding and commitment to your organization.
What the upcoming election mean for the arts
What will happen to arts, arts education, and arts agencies after the coming election? If you are registered to vote then you hold part of the answer in how you decide to cast your ballot. The coming election could very well decide whether or not there are numerous municipal, statewide, and national agencies that help support arts infrastructure and education.
Americans for the Arts collects information on elected candidates based on their voting record and stated policies. At the top of the ticket President Barrack Obama has gotten good marks from Americans for the Arts. He has proposed and supported increasing funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and has come out against cuts to arts education funding and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mitt Romney on the other hand has pledged to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Support for the arts, arts funding, and arts education doesn't split strictly on party lines though and it is incumbent upon us as voters to understand where our national, statewide, municiple and local elected officials stand on support the arts, education, and the creative economy. Americans for the Arts has a handy tool that you can use to look up the positions of elected officials at all levels.
Meta Data: What is it and How should it be used
The way that meta tags and meta data has been used by search engines has changed dramatically over the last dozen years. Meta data, for those who are uninitiated roughly means data about data. Meta tags, in theory, are one of several tools that search engines and other clients use to return results in searches. How much time should you spend on writing meta tags and meta data? For the purposes of organization Meta will be divided into three categories: Keywords, Tags, and Other Meta.
Several articles about the demise of Meta Keywords have been written in the last couple of years. Google announced a while back that they no longer use meta tag keywords. Bing and Yahoo do, however, use keywords as one of several hundred published criteria. Key words are, by most expert assessments, the least valuable of meta data. While they may assist in some search engine optimization, the best way to get your webpages in search engines is to use wording in the body of the email that contains they keywords that you would normally use in meta. How much time should you spend on keywords? Not much. If you are low on time or energy this is the first thing that you should drop.
Tags are also meta data that is used in web searches. They help to categorize your content much in the same way that keywords used to. Google has a great page for usage of these items that tell browsers and search engines what to do with the data that it sees on your web site. You can leave instructions to not index information, not provide alternative descriptions, and not to cache your website. You can also set up links for translation to other languages.
Title and description is essential meta data. If you are using a WYSIWYG editor such as Word Press or Joomla the Title and Description are automatically embedded into your HTML as you fill out the handy fields that are provided to you. The description of any page returned through search is displayed as a snippet in the results. This text is sometimes truncated depending upon the search engine and settings on your computer and the length of the description.
For more information about Meta go to the W3 website. In fact even if you aren't interested in Meta Data you should probably go to the W3 website and familiarize yourself with the content. Anyone who has a website should be aware of W3 and the tools and information available.
An Uncontroversial Use of Cell Phones in Movie Theaters with This American Life Live
This American Life Live made us use our cell phones in theaters this last Thursday, May 10, 2012. It was great. In fact is was so engaging that we made music together. The audience stomped and snapped their fingers along to music that OK Go was playing live.
The instructions were: if you have an iPhone or an Android you were to download the This American Life Live app before coming to the show. The app was written in part by one of the members of OK Go to enable the audience to play a backup part to the music that the band was playing. Those without smart phones had a role too. They stopped and snapped their fingers. The cues for this were scrolled down a split screen (with the band on the other half of the split screen) in a similar fashion to the cues for Guitar Hero or Rock Band (though actually a bit easier to read). The warm up song was a hand bell version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit followed by Ok GO's Needing/Getting. The theater rang with music from over the speakers but was lent depth by the sounds generated by the mobile devices. There was a palpable sense of excitement as people tried to keep up with the musical instructions and percussive stopping directions. It was easy to sense the engagement and the audience was giddy and laughter rang out after the collective performance. All in all it was a great success.
The success of this event want predicated upon the idea that the rules will have to be broken. Ira Glass stated during his introduction to the piece using cell phones that he, himself had to call the heads of two movie theater companies to clear the usage of cell phones in the theaters he was using. The convention of not using cell phones helps to create a positive experience for other patrons during a regular show. The usage of these devices as part of the show was a refreshing and creative way to break the rules and to let the cell phone juju out. Interestingly after the cell phone piece no one in the audience ventured to use their phones.
Perhaps the best and most effective way to discourage cell phone use in a theater is to provide engaging and captivating content. A sure sign that a performance is failing to engage is cell phone use which is an indicator that checking out is occurring. A recap of the This American Life Live event has links and images of the performance including a Terry Gross and Mike Birbiglia short film which is priceless.
White Space on the Broadcast Spectrum and Why We Should Care
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates every device that emits radio waves. This means cell phones, radio, television, and wireless microphones. In 2010 the FCC issued a rule that ordered users of wireless microphones to stop broadcasting at 700 MHz. This resulted in the forced scrapping and purchase of tens of thousands of dollars of wireless microphones that broadcast on that length of spectrum. Story over? Not really. Now, two years later the FCC is talking about 'repacking' the broadcast spectrum again.
Any change of this type would result in tens of thousands of dollars of additional cost for every arts organization effected. This is cost that was already borne out in good faith two years ago. As congress moves forwards with legislation that would patch the budget with broadcast spectrum auctions the arts community finds itself potentially under the gun in a time where budgets are already lean.
To give a sense of scope for this issue, there are an estimated 21,000 school theaters in addition to the thousands of professional theaters. Combined, these facilities serve millions of patrons and students and contribute nearly eight billion dollars to the economy.
The problem is that the FCC hasn't formally recognized wireless microphones formally as a broadcast user of the spectrum. As a result it is easy to give away the spectrum that they use. For more information on this issue Theater Communications Group (TCG) has put together a list of articles on the subject.
How much are you worth to Facebook?
Now that Facebook is going public (reluctantly, due to a Federal Trade Commission rule) and is releasing financial statements we actually know how much money Facebook is making off of us: about $1.21 a quarter according to Techcrunch. This amounts to around $4.84 a year per user average. This figure is of course only part of Facebook's income portfolio as it makes money off of advertising, investments, and licensing. At times like these it is important to remember that Facebook is not ours, it is run for the profit of the shareholders. The dozen or so iterations of Facebook that have been implemented over the last eight years have all had modifications that were put in place to maximize data mining and advertising sales.
A worthwhile re-read at a time like this was done by a former blogger for this site. Here are links to Amelia Northrup's social media analytic series:
http://www.technologyinthearts.org/2011/05/the-art-of-social-media-analytics-part-1/
http://www.technologyinthearts.org/2011/06/the-art-of-social-media-part-2/
http://www.technologyinthearts.org/2011/06/the-art-of-social-media-analytics-part-3/
Cash Mobs
According to Public Radio International, the first Cash Mob was started by a writer and engineer from Buffalo called Chris Smith to counter the growing culture of discounting (couponing and deals from Living Social as well as other deal sites). Now in over a dozen cities in the United States and Canada Cash Mobs are getting significant media attention. Organized online, the suggested rules are relatively simple and are centered around the concept that the business must be a local one and that a non-discounted product must be purchased for $20 or more by each member of the cash mob.
Cash mobs are most frequently organized through social media and can be found under the Twitter hashtag #cashmob or on Facebook under cashmob and your city. As of the international cash mob day last March 24th, 2012 Cash Mobs have been organized in 32 states and two Canadian provinces. Growth of this movement has been swift with new cities joining cash mob lists every week and is sometimes linked with a buy local campaign.
The goals of many of these cash mobs are to save a local business who's sales have been low. By all indications there has not yet been a cash mob for a theater or museum but it is only a matter of time. As cash mobs are supposed to be social activities they would be well suited for many arts settings. The social media context for these activities have made them extremely easy to measure metrics on as each cash mob elicits numerous check ins and photo posts. The incentive for participation in these activities is a sense of community support. Non-profit arts organizations are fundamentally community organizations ergo the arts should be obvious beneficiaries of this movement. If anyone knows of a successful cash mob for an arts organization, please comment with the results and links if possible!
Americans are paying more for culture, opportunity looms on the technology front
New information out from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) indicate that Americans are spending more for both technology and entertainment (a catagory that includes cultural expenditures). How can cultural organizations capitalize on this? What does this mean? Articles in both The Atlantic and NPR's Planet Money look at these trends from a more general standpoint but don't drill down on the idea for the arts. The facts presented from the Atlantic indicate that 2007 Recreation expenditures are up by 1.7% over those from the US in 1947. The NPR article states that as a percentage of household income, expenditures on Entertainment rose from 5% of the total in 1947 to 6% in 2007. This information along with the more current information from the CPI which had the Recreation Index gaining by .6% (driven in part by a 1.2% and 2.0% rise in admission to cultural events in Dec 2011 and Jan 2012) this last January give the arts sector some reason to look favorably towards the horizon. These numbers mean recovery, and recovery means opportunity for change.
The relative gains in the arts sector are paltry compared to the gains made on technology purchases in the same amount of time. The number of personal computers in homes (worldwide), for instance, grew from 152 Million from 1993 to 2002. The number of internet users in that same time frame went from 10.5 million to 716 million. The growth of other tech is no less startling by most accounts. The synthesis of the growth of technology has yet to be fully realized by the arts sector at large but this brief respite (where revenue is rebounding from recession) should be a moment where we rally to adapt.
What do these broad economic indicators mean? Consumer confidence has been slowly recovering since the doldrums that it was in around 2008 and 2009. As budgets start to recover and earned income from ticket and admission sales start to edge up, arts leaders will be faced with decisions about what to do with the money. The temptation to return departments and programs to the pre-recession status quo will be strong; the opportunity, however, for transformation through technology to meet the larger changes in how people are consuming arts and culture should be the priority.
As many technologies are currently moving out of first generation and subsequently becoming less expensive the opportunity to develop interfacing content for them is also becoming less expensive. Application development for mobile devices is, for instance, now within the fiscal reach of the arts sector. Similarly simulcast capabilities in HD are coming into broader usage in peforming arts organizations across the country. The time to identify and implement new technology is now.
How much should you trust your candidates for employment?
Verifying information on people online is cheaper and easier than it has ever been. So why is it then that so many arts organizations don't use this technology to vet new employees? The traditional method of calling a few references is relatively easy to foil and according to some studies up to 50% of all job applicants either outright lie on their applications or stretch the truth with regards to previous duties, length of employment, or reason for leaving (depending upon how you view lying). According to MSNBC as many as 80% of for profit firms use background checks on new employees today (up sharply from 30% in 1996). There were no figures available from the arts sector regarding this practice but anecdotal evidence indicates the numbers are much lower.
There are innumerable firms that offer electronic background check services for around $20 per verification (word search for background or pre-employment screening returns hundreds of firms). The service usually includes verification of education and employment as well as criminal records from local, state, and federal levels. For additional money you can also get credit checks and driving records. Studies have shown that employees that are under financial distress are multiple times more likely to steal from their employers and while that may not be an eliminating factor regarding hiring an employee it may help greatly to coincidentally bring in a credit councilor for an office wide employee training.
With funding competition at an all time high it is incumbent upon not-for-profit organizations to utilize every dollar as efficiently as possible. When it comes to hiring however, some organizations set aside analytic tools and rely on an ad hoc collection of old human resource practices and intuition.
Concerns of privacy and respect deter many hiring managers from running background check, but the truth is that prospective employees expect to be checked out in this day and age. Most prospective employees have already offered more personal information (although it is usually different in content) through their Facebook account than background screenings return in their findings. Indeed some corporate employers are actually asking for access to employees Facebook pages. While most would consider this a bit extreme it does raise a point: what employees of an organization do in their personal lives sometimes has great impact on the perception of a not-for-profit in the eyes of the public.
The extent to which the arts sector vets its employees is a matter of personal or institutional value. Even though these tools are available and inexpensive doesn't necessarily mean that it would make sense to each institution for every employee. Hiring managers need to ask themselves the questions: 1) What tasks do we need to be extra safe with regards to hiring for? Examples of this criteria include employees with keys to the building or safe or employees who have contact with children or vulnerable populations. 2) What degree of background check do we need? There are very extensive checks out there and not all data is truly useful for accomplishing the goals that realistically need to be attained. 3) What are our ethics with regards to what is private data and what is fair game? Issues that can come up with regards to this question get into the territory of medical conditions, personal relationships, sexual identity, and so on.
The key to tackling these issues is to talk about them. The ensuing dialogue within an organization will help define and address questions and define procedure. Books and consultants can also help codify procedure and answer legal questions. Consult an attorney for more information on the legality of asking for information from prospective employees.
PIPS:lab Diespace, Interactive Multimedia Experience
PIPS:lab recently made its US debut during a festival featuring Dutch artists here in Pittsburgh. The Amsterdam group has been performing together for about a dozen years. The work that they performed was categorized as absurdist media theater and was a short evening length work without intermission. The use of technology for this performing group is integral. The performance itself was noteworthy for its innovation on a number of different levels. It is worth noting, however, the problems that PIPS:lab had in functionally executing the performance due to glitchy technology. The performance, Diespace, was essentially an introduction to a fictional new social network site that audience members were encouraged to visit after they die (or die in order to visit). The actors polled the audience about their opinions regarding whether or not there is life after (or before, humorously) death. These polls were conducted with a cool audience participation tool of light capture setup where the audience essentially wrote on a screen upstage.
The other insertion of tech into the performance involved video/audio remixes of various clips taken of audience member during and before the show. These clips were then edited in real time into the performance. This, in turn, served to engage the audience but through a pretty controlled format. The display of the video and audio taken from the audience drew laughter and made the audience excited and was a high point of the performance lending to greater investment from the collective. Additional audience participate was to be had through a lottery during the show where the faces of the audience were put into a virtual tumbler on the screen upstage. Three audience members won prizes with the grand prize being a premium account for Diespace (which included significant stage time for the audience member who won it).
The performance unfolded at a relatively brisk pace with musical interludes to cover moments where the technology and content was being prepped. The problem with this was that the performers ended up being a bit un-invested in the music and as a result it was hard to be carried away by the performance. It was easy to check out during these scenes through the distractions on stage. It was the sense of this reviewer that there was only one true musician on stage, a fact that was born out by the program notes about the artists backgrounds.
At least three times during the performance there were loud warnings of a computer crash each time forcing the performers on stage to repeat a few moments to a few minutes of the action. This in turn lent to a stutter stop feel to the performance. Execution of Diespace did not look like it was easy and to be certain what PIPS:lab is trying to do is not easy in general. They deserve applause for attempting to stitch together so many constituent elements in the moment. It was fascinating at times to see the failures of the technology and there was rarely a moment where the audience did not have something that they could try to be engaged in. The relative successes and failures of this performance reinforce the point that some technologies have a ways to go before they are both accessible to independent performing artists.
The innovation of groups like PIPS:lab hopefully will be the wave of the future and it is gratifying to see media artists take the stage with musicians and actors. The combination of talents of stage was a rich soup and Diespace was a valuable experience for the insights that it gave with regards to generation of true multi-disciplinary live work.
Creators Project in San Francisco
Last weekend the Creator's Project garnered significant attention from national media. From the mission statement on the website "The Creators Project is a global celebration of art and technology." and "The Creators Project is a new kind of arts and culture channel for a new kind of world." As an intersection between art and tech it seems appropriate that the blog weigh in and take a look at what they did, how they did it, and the implications. The Creator's Project has major sponsorship from Intel Corp and VICE with significant online free content focusing on mostly short form interview of Creator associated artists. This Project offers similar promise to other ventures to offering culture and arts online to ideas such as On The Boards TV and Jacob's Pillow Virtual Pillow but is already operating on a much larger scale than either of these.
The Creators Project offers arts and culture online at a scale that is extraordinary for such a young institution. The levels of participation on information sharing that is happening through their website looks unparalleled and should be looked towards as a model for successful integration of technology and the arts. The Creators Project was started in May of 2010 by VICE and seems to have two major interfaces with the public. There is a exhibit/show that has toured around the world each year and an expanding web presence that now counts video downloads in the millions. The content is broken out into six different categories: Music, Film, Art, Design, Gaming, and Fashion and has engaged with artists from all of these areas to provide content online and for the annual festival. They will be rolling out content collected from the event last weekend (March 17-19, 2012) in the coming weeks.
Current content on the website is a mind blowing array of new directions taken by artists in each of the fields. One of the standout artists at the event last weekend was a new work from visual multidisciplinary artist Chris Milk. The installation called the Treachery of Sanctuary incorporated user interaction with digital transformation to look at elements of flight. Visuals of this can be found here.
Anther fascinating example that was found on the Creator's Project website was the Electronic Shadow from France. Electronic Shadow uses imaging technology and software to generate interactive 3D maps of people places and objects. These images then can be used and manipulated in artistic fashions. The implication for this technology would, for instance, be a game changing one for other art forms such as dance.
Exchange of ideas such as Creator's Project bring together the bleeding edge of Technology and the Arts and as such should be a point of engagement for institutions that are looking to modernize and include new audiences (and younger audiences). The artists involved have obviously successfully engaged these audiences already and by following the lead of these success stories arts leaders at more conventional organizations can find hope in a new direction in reshaping structure and content to address the demands of a more complex world.